Julian Brazier: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	I am most grateful for this opportunity to call for the Second Reading of my Bill. I am also grateful to the large number of colleagues in all parts of the House who have given up their precious constituency day to be here.
	There is growing concern in this House and in the country about the rising tide of violence. Whatever the complications around counting, reporting and recording, the statistics suggest a rise of about tenfold over the past 25 years in violent crime in general and, more specifically, in rape; and the trend remains upwards.
	The Bill seeks to address what I believe is one of the fundamental drivers of our increasingly violent society. It has received the endorsement of leaders of several of our religious communities, including the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, the Anglican Bishop of Bristol, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the League of British Muslims.
	I am very grateful that the Prime Minister has agreed to see the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and me to discuss the issues raised by the Bill.
	This morning, I shall offer compelling evidence that the growth in violent offences is linked to the growing availability in the media of extremely violent and explicitly sexual material. Part of that material falls within the orbit of the British Board of Film Classification, which is responsible for classifying films on an advisory basis for local authorities, and has statutory powers with regard to videos, DVDs and certain classes of video games. My Bill would reform that organisation.
	It is manifestly obvious that some very important media lie outside the remit of the BBFC, particularly television and the internet. In a private Member's Bill one can only do so much; my aim is to suggest ways of setting boundaries that we could then extend to other areas. I hope that the House will bear with me if I spend the bulk of my speech focusing on the need for reform, and then briefly outline the provisions.
	I shall start with a group of videos banned by the Director of Public Prosecutions a generation ago. They were re-examined by the BBFC three years ago, and one of those that it decided to release into ordinary high-street outlets such as HMV was "SS Experiment Camp". Let me quote from the sleeve of this video:
	"Female political prisoners are brought to Von Kleiben's secret camp to have sex with Wehrmacht troops as part of a breeding study—at least the compliant, beautiful ones, that is. The plain Janes and the uncooperative experience a course of cruel experiments by Von Kleiben's lesbian assistant."
	The film shows in voyeuristic detail women being tortured to death by SS camp guards. A BBFC spokesman commented on the film:
	"It is tasteless—but then I find most Mel Gibson films tasteless...It is not going to create an attitude towards Jewish women that is harmful."
	It is certainly true that far more brutal films have since been released, but I urge those in the House who feel—and I know there are some—that although material may be tasteless, adults should be allowed to watch whatever they like in a free country, to read the report published by the Ministry of Justice last September. Its title is interesting in itself: "The evidence of harm to adults"—it focused exclusively on adults—"relating to exposure to extreme pornographic material: a rapid evidence assessment." The survey was based on 124 independent studies from around the world. I shall quote some of the findings. It says that
	"the research reviewed in this report provides evidence of the negative psychological, attitudinal and behavioural effects on adults who access this material."
	The material, incidentally, was hardcore, but not necessarily violent pornography. The report continues:
	"These include (for men): physiological arousal...leading to beliefs that women enjoy or desire rape...; attitudinal effects; rape myth acceptance; pro-rape attitudes; self-reported likelihood to use force or to rape; behavioural effects such as: aggression in the laboratory after exposure; using pornographic materials to prepare for sexual offences...; actual real life rape and sexual aggression".
	There will always be those who claim that there can be a correlation without a cause—that this whole phenomenon can be explained away by saying that those who are prone to rape have a greater predisposition to view pornographic material. As someone who worked for a number of years as a statistician, I can tell the House that it is possible to pursue that sort of chicken and egg argument until the cows come home. We do not accept it, and never have accepted it, in areas such as simulated child pornography, where child porn is made with actresses who are actually adults but appear to be children. We do not accept it in the case of racist literature. Interestingly, the Ministry of Justice report addresses this point head on, and comments:
	"Research testing theoretical models has identified a mutually—reinforcing relationship between extreme pornography as a causal factor in instigating sexual aggression, and a predisposition to sexual aggression creating an interest in extreme pornographic material."
	There we have the chicken and the egg.
	I shall give one or two further examples. In Leicester in 2004, Warren Leblanc admitted murdering his 14-year-old friend Stefan Pakeerah in a murderous assault with a claw hammer and knife. I know that the right hon. Member for Leicester, East will be dwelling on that case, so I will not do so, but the testimony of the father is well worth listening to. An even more horrific case was that of the two 10-year-old schoolboys who were convicted of murdering toddler Jamie Bulger. When the noble Lord Alton was an MP, he commented on the remarks of the trial judge, Justice Morland. Lord Alton said:
	"The context of my amendment two years ago was the killing of young boy, James Bulger, in the city of Liverpool...In the aftermath of the verdicts, the trial judge remarked on, 'the striking similarities' between scenes in the video "Child's Play 3" and the attack on James Bulger."
	He went on to point out that
	"440 other videos had been hired during the previous few years by the father of one of the boys. The videos included soft pornography, violent horror and necrophilia."—[ Official Report, 3 April 1996; Vol. 275, c. 309.]
	Last year the BBFC at least sought to ban the successor to the game "Manhunt 2". Its director, David Cook, said:
	"Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game."
	Indeed, I understand that under the points system in the game, the more sadistic the killing, the higher the number of points a player gets. The BBFC's video appeals committee overturned this ban, but found its own ruling overturned in the High Court. Although this process has finally yielded the right result in that case, the House will not be surprised to hear that one of the provisions of my Bill is to reform the video appeals committee.

Peter Bone: Years and years ago, I was on the local council, which used to review films and which could overrule classification. I would like to know whether that can still be done. Whenever we did overrule classification, the danger was that we would give a lot of publicity to the film, and then everyone would go and watch it in a neighbouring authority area. Is my hon. Friend touching on that issue in his Bill?

Julian Brazier: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Of course, local authorities do sometimes make a stand. In the field of rap music, which is unregulated, Brighton has just said that it will close down licensed premises that use such music that features incitement to violence. As my hon. Friend points out, a local authority standing alone is of limited value, for exactly the reasons he sets out. We have to go back to the sources, and the BBFC is what we have at the moment.
	I turn to one more example, from a quarter that might surprise some Members of the House.  Boyz magazine has given me the following quote and asked me to use it:
	"As the leading and longest-standing gay weekly magazine, Boyz has taken a stance against bareback videos"—
	that is, sex scenes showing males operating without condoms. It goes on to say that
	"we reported last October that three young models, aged 18, 21 and 26, contracted HIV on a British bareback video shoot"—
	three young men now facing effectively a sentence of death. The quote continues:
	"It is disturbing that the film was released despite the fact that...at least one of the models was very strongly opposed to the film being released...Boyz magazine is in favour of gay adult material being available to our readers, of course, but we do not support the promotion of films featuring unsafe sex. The BBFC is effectively certifying films which eroticise and promote unsafe sex amongst gay men."
	I shall not conceal from the House the fact that I have some disagreements with  Boyz magazine in some areas, but I am extremely grateful that it has come out strongly behind my Bill.
	It is remarkable that a number of the BBFC's former leading lights have condemned the institution's current attitude. Speaking to the  Daily Mail, former BBFC chairman Andreas Whittam Smith said that he believed that it had been taking a more relaxed approach to violence. He was, of course, overturned by the wretched video appeals committee when he tried to take a stance on violence as chairman. Referring to a recently released film, "Eastern Promises", Mr. Whittam Smith said:
	"If I thought this was the type of film that was likely to make people leave the cinema, or even make them have to look away for quite a while, then I would question why the scene should be left in."
	Michael Bor, the former principal examiner of the BBFC, came to see me. He said:
	"Nobody familiar with the media business could deny that there has been a liberalisation of attitudes to violence...We have to be much more sophisticated in recognising that young people are being desensitised by growing exposure to violence in the media; violence is becoming normalised in their perceptions."
	It is not just the Ministry of Justice report that accepts the argument that violence and sexual material encourage violence against women. The Advertising Standards Authority launched a seminar last year under its chairman Lord Smith, the former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, on violent imagery in advertising. The ASA has an excellent record in that area, unlike the BBFC. For example, in 2005 it banned a Reebok advertisement on the grounds that it glamorised gun violence. A few years ago, Professor Andrew Sims, past president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, commented that
	"there is now vast anecdotal evidence associating the portrayal of violence with violent behaviour and more than one thousand papers linking violence in the media to actual behaviour".
	Earlier I quoted Government research and referred to the Prime Minister's open door. Now let me refer to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who said last November that
	"studies have shown that as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's OK to force a woman to have sex. In my mind, this is an example of moral collapse.
	We need widespread cultural change, and addressing this moral failure represents a real challenge to British society: to families, schools, local communities and businesses."
	He went on to say that
	"the past decade or so has seen the growing sexualisation of our society, where sex is aimed at an ever younger audience and it's cool to treat women like sex objects...we need those that work in the media and music industry to exercise their responsibility in how they present female role models."
	The previous August he had remarked that
	"the companies which make music videos, films and computer games have a social responsibility not to promote casual violence, the gang culture and the degradation of women".
	My Bill aims to make the British Board of Film Classification accountable to Parliament and the public in a way that should encourage a return to more responsible decisions. Clause 1 gives a power of scrutiny over the appointment of the four principal officers of the BBFC to the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which is the Committee responsible for studying crime and violence. In each case, the BBFC would be required to submit a shortlist of three names to the Committee, allowing it to interview each person. The BBFC would then make the appointment, but the Committee, as well as the Secretary of State, would have a veto.
	Currently, the BBFC makes all its appointments internally. Under the Video Recordings Act 1984, the Home Secretary—now the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport—was given the power to designate the body with control over videos, so that the Government in effect have a veto over that key position.

Julian Brazier: That is true, but that veto has never been exercised in practice, and as there are no hearings, it is very unlikely that it would be. The Bill would get it out into the open, and the hon. Gentleman will hear some more reasons in a moment why we need to do that. In his statement to the House on constitutional reform last July, the Prime Minister announced:
	"The House of Commons should also have a bigger role in the selection of key public officials. I propose, as a first step, pre-appointment hearings for public officials whose role it is to protect the public's rights and interests".—[ Official Report, 7 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 816.]
	For convenience, I shall deal next with clause 3, which gives a similar power of veto to the Home Affairs Committee over the BBFC's guidelines. They are the guidelines that the BBFC's examiners work to and they are available on its website. Let us be in no doubt at all that the guidelines have been progressively liberalised. If we compare the guidelines for 2005 with those of five years earlier, the differences are striking. For example, the guidelines in 2000 for videos rated at 15 said:
	"There may be no emphasis on the use of easily accessible lethal weapons (in particular, knives)."
	In 2005, that was watered down to:
	"Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised."
	Crucially, all reference to knives was removed from the guidelines in 2005. There have been a string of films portraying knife attacks since then, and we have also seen a large growth in knife crime. I am not suggesting that the two are cause and effect, but I believe the one to be a factor. Similarly, to give one more example, the BBFC's 2000 guidelines for 12-rated videos said:
	"Dangerous techniques...should contain no imitable detail."
	In 2005, however, the guidelines said:
	"Dangerous techniques...should not dwell on imitable detail".
	In videos, people can dwell as much as they like, whatever their age, and there is lots of evidence that children play again and again even quite short clips that they find intriguing.
	Amazingly, the BBFC's own polling conducted in 2004, shortly before the 2005 guidelines were issued—it was conducted by TNS Media, a reputable body—showed that a clear two-to-one majority among those in the public who had an opinion believed that too much violence was allowed into films for those two age bands. That poll was properly conducted by a reputable polling organisation. The BBFC did not like the outcome, so it went off and conducted an online poll—in fact, we can follow the paper trial through its own documents. In its consultation document, the BBFC admitted to directing people, including
	"people active in the film industry",
	to the website survey. The results were, of course, unsurprising. In the new online survey, which was not properly conducted, only 13 per cent. of respondents thought that the standards of violence in the guidelines were not strict enough. Sadly, the BBFC chose to follow its own cooked web poll and watered down standards on, for example, knife crime, instead of following the poll that it had commissioned from a reputable organisation.
	More recent surveys record even more startling results. Media Watch, the campaigning organisation, whose work I strongly commend, commissioned an independent survey by CommunicateResearch, another top independent polling organisation. If any hon. Member goes to CommunicateResearch's website when they leave the Chamber—they will not do so, I hope, before I finish—they will see the top item: the research it published yesterday showing that 76 per cent. of people support the tighter regulation of violence in films and games, and on TV; that 68 per cent. believe such violence to be linked to actual violent crimes; and that 80 per cent. believe that the BBFC process for approving films should be transparent and accountable to Parliament. That—to return to the query that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) raised—is why we need greater accountability to Parliament.
	Currently, only the industry can appeal against a ruling by the BBFC, either to restore cut material or to lower a classification. No appeal from anybody else is allowed. Appeals are currently handled in the BBFC by the supposedly independent appeals committee. The last violent video game to be rejected before "Manhunt 2"—"Carmageddon", which was rejected in 1997—was released after its makers employed an expensive Queen's counsel on the appeal.
	It may be argued that there have to be limits on appeals because otherwise there might be a vast number of them. In Australia, any single member of the public can appeal to a genuinely independent appeal body, but all my Bill asks is that if 50 MPs sign an early-day motion as a result of public concern, it should trigger an appeal. No one is suggesting that MPs should be directly involved. I do not want direct political interference; we just want accountability, so that an independent body will look at the matter if there is a lot of public concern.
	Clause 2 proposes that the BBFC be required to keep a list of volunteers from whom a jury of 12 should be randomly selected to hear each appeal. It also proposes to limit the service of the panel from which juries are selected; it is time-limited to prevent panellists from becoming case-hardened. Incidentally, it is a crucial feature of Australian law that everyone involved in the process is time-limited.

Julian Brazier: I look forward to the hon. Gentleman's joining me in Committee so that we can sort that out. In fact, there is an answer: the Bill provides for the appointment of a chairman to the jury, who will presumably have the casting vote. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's question, but we can debate it further in Committee—and I hope that he will serve on it. Let me remind the House that at this stage, we are debating whether the Bill should be given a Second Reading.

Julian Brazier: I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend, but the film industry's concerns are not my primary worry. The fact is that the system works perfectly well in Australia and it can be put into effect at any stage. Sometimes people hear about the release of a particularly violent video in America, for example. It is interesting to compare the three common law jurisdictions of America, Britain and Australia. We are positioned somewhere in the middle. In America, the system is completely liberalised, except with regard to child pornography, for which there are very tough federal offences, including those for when adult actors pose as children. Australia represents the direction that I would like to move in. I am not suggesting that this issue is the only factor, but it is a fact that there is a great deal less violent youth crime in Australia than here, and I believe that this problem is one of the causes.

Julian Brazier: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend and I hope that my next example will make that point almost as well as he has just made it.
	Let me return to the testimony from  Boyz magazine, our largest circulation gay magazine, as this particular provision is the one that it most strongly supports:
	"If there was an independent body in place with the power to hear appeals against the BBFC's decisions, then this young man"—
	the 19-year-old whom I mentioned earlier, who has a sentence of death hanging over him—
	"could have appealed to that body for the DVD—in which he became HIV positive—not to be given certification."
	That was highlighted in our exchange of e-mails as the single reason for the magazine's support for the Bill.
	Currently, there is no way of reviewing a decision retrospectively, except at the behest of the BBFC. After the outcry over the original "Manhunt" case, for instance, a review by the BBFC would have been welcome. Thus, clause 2 allows for that sort of retrospective ruling. If people have heard about a film, they can initiate the process earlier, but retrospective rulings will be allowed. Again, however, that sets a much higher standard than in Australia, where just one person can trigger an appeal. My Bill says that an appeal will be possible if 50 MPs sign an early-day motion.
	Finally, clause 4 will introduce increases in penalties for offences. Ian Muspratt, chairman of the Video Standards Council—a body wholly independent of the BBFC—commented that
	"a study three years ago suggested that it is more profitable to sell pirated videos and DVDs than cocaine and it is often the same people doing it".
	The current abysmal lack of enforcement, with weak penalties anyway, means that, while there is still some classification, the system for enforcement has effectively broken down. Mr. Muspratt described to me the vast numbers of illegal videos and DVDs moving around the country—that is the case even before we start thinking about the internet.
	I am grateful to the Prime Minister for agreeing to see the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and me. I am very much aware that the Government have commissioned Dr. Tanya Byron to research the children's end of this issue. I must say, however, that although I was very impressed with the work that she is doing when I met her, this is not just an issue about children. Britain today has a rising tide of violence, particularly sexual violence against women and young girls. Much of it, especially when they are trafficked, never reaches official statistics, but the official statistics are bad enough. The perpetrators are not typically under 18. The tide of violence available through the media, including films, DVDs, videos and video games is fuelling the problem. The evidence shows overwhelmingly that that is the case, so I urge the House to give the Bill its Second Reading.

Keith Vaz: I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) and I congratulate him on his good fortune in the ballot, which has given him the opportunity—one that few hon. Members have—to bring a Bill on such an important issue before the House. The hon. Gentleman presented his case with skill and eloquence—there was no hysteria in what he said—and he brought to Parliament's and the public's attention an issue of crucial concern. It is a 21st century issue that, as a result of technological changes over the last 20 years, will impact on every single household and every single child in this country and beyond.
	I am pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport in her place on the Front Bench. She will recall our pleasant meeting a few years ago, when I and other Members brought the issue to her attention. At that time, I also met my right hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Woodward)—then a Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, but now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. We explored ways in which the Government could help to ensure that the classification of video games gave adults access to them while protecting our children from them.
	The way that the hon. Member for Canterbury made his case is important, because this is a question not of censorship but of protecting our children in particular from having access to these terrible games, which show scenes of horrific violence, as he described. His Bill, which I am pleased to support, proposes a procedure that would ensure that the most violent of those games did not circulate in this country. I welcome the procedure and also the vast amount of time that he has put into the subject.
	The hon. Gentleman said in response to one of his hon. Friends that we do not come here to speak on behalf of the industry; it can make its case very eloquently. The industry is one of the strongest and most powerful in the media today, and London is the centre of that industry. Whenever those of us who raise the issue of video games have done so positively in relation to concerns about violence, we have been pilloried in the press that is sponsored by the video games industry for trying in some way to destroy it.

Keith Vaz: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We welcome the fact that such companies are in London—they provide jobs and also taxes for the Government—but it is important that there should be no duplicity over how they operate. I do not know the specifics of what they are doing on corporate responsibility, but I hope that they continue. Also, I hope they will show corporate responsibility in how they prosecute their policies.

Brooks Newmark: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, as this is a big issue. I appreciate the motives of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) in introducing the Bill, but he has himself accepted that the largest platform out there is the internet. The people generating that business are not based in Hammersmith or anywhere else in London; it is an underground business. Surely the House would be far better spending its time trying to legislate to control the internet and the messages it sends.
	I have another question for the right hon. Gentleman. If we are to teach our children about these issues, would not that message best come from the family? Families should be trying to deal with morality of that sort. It is hard to deal with a tiny fraction of the market by controlling DVDs and videos, as the Bill proposes.

Keith Vaz: The hon. Gentleman is right on both points. We in the House cannot control the internet, but that is no excuse for not taking the first step in controlling video games. I will come on to his multiple children later, when I discuss the effect of these issues on our children and the fact that parents need to be responsible. I shall cite a number of cases as examples. Let us be clear: we are not against the industry and we are not against having it based in London, contributing to our economy, but it has to show responsibility. We come to the table to help it.
	The hon. Member for Canterbury is right to praise the Prime Minister for readily agreeing to see us in March and for setting up the Byron review. Indeed, successive Prime Ministers have been running ahead of their Governments, because in the meetings that we have had with them—we have also raised the issue at Prime Minister's questions—they have been very concerned. However, I have to tell the House that Ministers, although courteous in their dealings with MPs, have not, I fear, understood the genuine concern among members of the public about how the issue has operated.
	I say to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and to the successor to the Department of Trade and Industry, which the Minister represented at my last meeting with her, that they have to understand that there is real concern about the level of violence in video games. Therefore, the issue is not just about defending the industry and London's position; it goes far beyond that.
	The hon. Member for Canterbury mentioned the Pakeerah case. As the House knows, my concerns about these issues arise from the brutal killing of Stefan Pakeerah, a 14-year-old Leicester schoolboy who was murdered in a savage attack in which he received 50 blows with a claw hammer—an attack that mirrored exactly a scene in the video game "Manhunt". I was not the first to say that; Giselle Pakeerah, his parent, has from the very beginning maintained and strongly believed that the fact that Warren Leblanc had a copy of "Manhunt" and that other children were looking at those scenes of violence led to the attack on Stefan.
	The hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) talked about parents. Giselle Pakeerah led a parents' campaign, because she wanted to ensure that such a thing never happened again. She was firm in pushing me and other Members representing Leicester to ensure that the issue was raised. That led to our first meeting with the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, which was most productive. He understood, perhaps because he is the parent of a young child, that something had to be done.
	At the meeting, we showed Mr. Blair a video game and, in particular, the casing around the video. We noted the fact that the 18 certificate on that casing—I am looking for a penny, but unfortunately I do not have one on me—was about the size of a 5p coin. The then Prime Minister was concerned that video game packaging was such that the need to ensure that under-18s did not have access to such games was not brought to the attention of parents, retailers and others.
	Since then, the 18 certificate has been increased in size to about that of a 50p coin, but it is nothing like what is on a cigarette packet. Therefore, even if children do not buy such games from retailers—I will refer to those briefly in a moment—they can visit the homes of adults, pick up a game, take it home and go upstairs to play it on the computer without their parents being aware of the fact that it contains a lot of violence. That is why I produced my Bill to amend the Video Recordings Act 1984. Although it did not get succeed, it drew our concerns to the House's attention.
	The university of Missouri, Columbia, has already produced what I regard as a definitive report—I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it—suggesting that there is a link between the violence in computer games and the violence of individuals. We have no equivalent research here. One thing that I hope the Minister will initiate, which I have urged on her many times, is the production of good research on the subject.
	As the hon. Member for Canterbury mentioned, when we raise the need for proper rather than voluntary regulation, the industry always says, "Well, video games are quite similar to films. How is a video game different from a film?" That is quite simple: video games are different because they are interactive.
	People who are watching a film at the cinema cannot participate in what is happening on the screen, or if they do they are removed from the cinema. However, someone sitting at a computer playing a video game, or someone with one of those small devices that young people have these days, the name of which I forget—  [Interruption.] PlayStations or PSPs, something of that kind.  [Interruption.] Well, whatever they are called, when people play these things, they can interact. They can shoot people; they can kill people. As the hon. Gentleman said, they can rape women. That is what is so wrong about the present situation. Dr. Tanya Byron's report will come out soon. The hon. Member for Canterbury and I are due to meet the Prime Minister around that time, on 18 or 19 March, and the Bill will give the House an opportunity to discuss matters further.
	I have two final points to make. The first concerns the role of retailers. People under the age of 18 can buy the kind of video games that we are debating from some of our biggest retailers, such as Tesco and Asda. Such retailers are not doing what they have to do to prevent the sale of those video games to people under the age of 18. No less a figure than the iconic Trevor McDonald, on his programme, sent mystery shoppers under 18 to seek to buy such video games from retailers. They were successful. I have asked Ministers many times how many retailers have been prosecuted for selling video games unlawfully to those under 18. We never seem to get the figures, but I hope that we will get them today to aid the hon. Member for Canterbury in what he is doing.

John Whittingdale: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). There is absolutely no doubt that the Bill addresses a matter of public concern, and my hon. Friend is doing us a public service by allowing us to debate it. Normally, he and I agree about almost all matters, so it is with some sadness that I say I do not agree with all his remarks this morning.
	Everybody accepts that there must be a degree of control. I should not think that anybody would argue that there should be no restrictions whatever and that one should be able to buy any kind of video game or other content. The question is where to draw the line. I think that everybody would accept that certain types of content are beyond that line and are unacceptable in society, such as child pornography, videos depicting forcible rape scenes and snuff movies, where it is apparently the case that the people being tortured or killed are actually suffering that fate in reality. Those are clearly unacceptable.
	Age ratings are just as important. I agree with the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) that the protection of children is perhaps our highest priority. That does not just mean protecting children from scenes of sex or violence through an 18 classification; it means going below 18 to say that some material is suitable for 15 or 12-year-olds but not for younger children. A lot of debate in the British Board of Film Classification is not about whether something should have an 18 classification but about the correct age rating below that. There is a lot of argument about it.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury suggested that society was somehow becoming more tolerant of violence and that films were now being released that would not have been released some time ago. That is the case, and there are certainly examples of that, but I should not like him to suggest that there has not always been huge controversy over films. I remember the controversy over Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers", which was said to push violence to a new extreme. I actually think that it is quite a good film. It is not very easy to watch, but it is well-made and it has a serious point. I also remember the controversy about David Cronenberg's "Crash", in which the main character enjoys having sex with the victims of car crashes. I went to see that film as part of the London film festival. It was not particularly good. I did not think that it had great merit, although I recognise that Cronenberg is a good director. Nevertheless, I accepted that some people would take a different view. Nothing in it was so unacceptable that I should prevent other people from going to see it. There are many other examples that I could give.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury has not mentioned the issue of faith, but that, too, generates huge controversy. Many people found Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" deeply objectionable, and a number of them thought that it should be banned. Actually, it was made by somebody who has some religious belief, and who argued that it was a deeply religious film. Again, I think that it is a film with some merit.
	Then there are films that were banned but that have now been released. My hon. Friend referred to some of the so-called video nasties of the early 1980s. I well remember the furore about "The Driller Killer" and "I Spit on your Grave". I saw "I Spit on your Grave" on sale in WH Smith a few months ago; it has now been passed for release. There is no doubt that society has changed its attitude. The Hammer horror films were originally rated 18. Vincent Price baring his fangs was thought to be so horrifying that nobody under 18 could watch it. Nobody today would seriously argue that the Hammer horror films should be rated 18.
	Similarly, "Straw Dogs", a hugely controversial film, was banned for many years, mainly because of the rape scene in it involving Susan George. Not only is it now available on release on DVD, but it has been shown on television, as have a number of the films that I have mentioned. Of course, if people believe that the BBFC was wrong to allow the release of a film, as soon as it is shown on television they have a method of protesting against that—they can make a complaint to Ofcom, as Ofcom has powers to rule against harmful or offensive content being shown on television, but as far as I am aware, it has not done so.
	My hon. Friend talked about "SS Experiment Camp". He kindly lent me a copy, and I spent 90 minutes—not the most enjoyable 90 minutes of my life—watching it. It is a truly dreadful film. It is what is called Italian schlock, and many people will find it offensive because of the subject matter—because it involves Nazis and extermination camps. It is pretty tasteless and pretty offensive, but I have to say that there is not a single scene in that film that I could argue should be banned. The scenes of so-called torture and sex are mild compared with anything that a person could see today in the Odeon down the road. I know that that will cause my hon. Friend concern, and he is right to have concern about some of the material—graphic scenes of torture and violence—that is now regarded as mainstream Hollywood entertainment. We are not talking about Italian schlock; we are talking about big-budget, multi-million pound films. My hon. Friend needs to be open about the fact that it is those scenes that he is trying to address.

John Whittingdale: Who knows what the Prime Minister's view will be? It does not appear that the Select Committee should scrutinise appointments to the BBFC.
	Another concern that I have is that my hon. Friend's Bill mentions the appointment of the "principal officers" of the BBFC being subject to scrutiny. It is proposed that a public body's appointments subject to examination by a Select Committee will be restricted to its chairman. I am not clear about who the principal officers are and how wide that description is. The BBFC has a number of senior staff, and it would be somewhat impractical for the appointment of more than the chairman to be subject to scrutiny by the Select Committee. Perhaps my hon. Friend can address that point.
	My next concern, which I referred to in an intervention on my hon. Friend, is about the nature of the appeals process. He set great store by the need for accountability to Parliament and the possibility of an appeal. Almost no regulator has an appeal process. If Ofcom or Ofgem reaches a decision, it remains its decision. The BBFC acts as a regulator, and I am not convinced that a general appeals process such as my hon. Friend describes is a good idea. It would also raise potential difficulties for the industry. I accept that we should not worry just about what the industry wants, but it is an important industry.
	At present, a film maker or distributor has lengthy discussions with the BBFC about what it will and will not accept and what cuts might be needed to achieve a certain classification. As I have said, classifications matter greatly to a film's potential revenue. It seems to be double jeopardy for that process to be undergone, an agreement reached and a film put on general release with the cuts that the BBFC has asked for, and then for the whole process to be overturned because 50 MPs sign an early-day motion saying that it should be.
	There is an existing internal appeals body, the Video Appeals Committee, to which my hon. Friend referred, although it is the industry that can appeal to it. He suggested that it was somehow there to do the industry's bidding—I think that he said it was quasi-independent. I would say only that its president is a former director of the Serious Fraud Office, and its membership includes people such as Biddy Baxter, whom I fondly remember as the producer of "Blue Peter"—my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) will remember her even better than I—Claire Rayner, Fay Weldon, former head teachers and directors of social services and area child protection committees. It is not an industry-led body. I was pretty horrified when it overturned the BBFC decision on "Manhunt 2", and I am pleased that its decision has been challenged, but I would not like it to be thought that the VAC is just a patsy for the industry, which will accept whatever argument is made to it.

Stephen Pound: Far too many of my colleagues signed it.
	I shall not go as far down the road to iconoclasm as the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford trod so elegantly. In one speech, he not only destroyed the principle of early-day motions, saying that in many cases constituents pressed a button and the Member responded, but he dissed the  Daily Mail. During my 10 years in the House I have heard many things that have amazed and delighted me, but I do not think that I have heard anything so shocking as a Member of Her Majesty's official Opposition speaking against the paper that is virtually the house magazine of the official Opposition. I congratulate him on his courage and iconoclasm, and hope that he receives a favourable press in the future.
	The hon. Member for Canterbury is simply trying to bring into a system a body that, as the Government say, is not publicly funded and to which there is no obvious link—usually, the fiscal link directs such bodies—so that the voice of the people can be heard. By doing that through a series of steps—there are at least three in the Bill—he is proposing something that is sound, sane, sensible and workable. I have one problem with the principle of the appeal; there may be a difficulty with that. The Government will quite rightly ask what the distributor will do if there is an inbuilt appeal mechanism. Will the distributor have a period of purdah in which the object—the DVD, film or game—is placed in a sealed vault, probably accessible only to the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, until the classification is made? I do not know the answer to that.
	As an accountable Parliament, which is the sounding board of the nation and reflects the individual views and concerns of our constituents, we must have some input into the process. The hon. Member for Canterbury suggests that that should happen in two ways. He suggests, first, that Parliament should have a say in the appointments. I could only be impressed by the names of the distinguished figures whom the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford mentioned were present members of the board. I would certainly not denigrate Biddy Baxter in any way. For God's sake, she educated my children—and me, for a large part of my life. However, why should there not be a link? Why should there be no coupling between what our constituents feel and the appointment of those who make the decisions?
	The Government will rightly say—because they are always right, particularly my right hon. Friend the Minister, who is inevitably and invariably right—that the BCCF is not about censorship—

Stephen Pound: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and give way to his expertise. I was once asked to sit on the old Greater London council film classification committee, which used to meet in a cellar in Portman square on Wednesday mornings at 11 o'clock. It was an immensely popular GLC committee even in the days of reel to reel and a number of councillors frequently had to take copies so that the items could be studied. However, that was an almost frivolous, innocent and naive world—we are talking about something very different nowadays.
	The hon. Gentleman touches on a point that is obviously of concern to us all, in that examining and classifying material has an impact on the person watching. There is no question about that, but police officers look at the foulest of material every hour of every day of every week. They rotate, but someone has to do it. There is a sniggering side to this, but there is also a profoundly serious side to it. When one talks to police officers who have had to view some of the material—we all know what I am talking about—it is apparent that it is one of the nastiest and foulest jobs that one can have, which can be corrosive and destructive.
	The hon. Member for Canterbury is simply trying to bring this matter into Parliament by having the names submitted to the Select Committee—whether it is that of the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) or that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) does not really matter. To have not a parliamentary veto but some parliamentary influence at that stage would be so reassuring to the general public.

Edward Vaizey: Surely the hon. Gentleman will agree that the trouble with the point about the early-day motions is that it relies on the self-restraint of Members of Parliament in not making a political issue of something. I give one specific example. Six years ago he tabled an early-day motion saying that no hon. Member should sign early-day motions because they were a waste of time, yet we learn, as I have learnt in the last hour, that on 25 February alone he signed four early-day motions. Surely, when an hon. Gentleman has made a point of principle that he cannot stick to, he cannot say anything about the restraint that hon. Members might show in this mechanism.

Stephen Pound: I am always unhappy about electronic equipment being used in the House, but that is the most valid use of it that I have yet heard.
	Dr. Tanya Byron is conducting a review. I am not saying that it was the prompting of the hon. Member for Canterbury that led to that; rather it was the result of the coming together of a widespread and general public concern, and that shows the importance of the Bill. There are some who do not like the idea of scrutinising the classification process, and there are some who feel there is something philosophically wrong about any group in society trying to impose standards on another group in society. There are some who take a purely libertarian view, and there are some who take the view that people should be allowed to do whatever they will to anyone, and let the market decide. Those days have genuinely passed. We have come to the point where we have looked into the abyss. We have seen things of such foul horror that we cannot stand back and do nothing. We cannot simply have a system that allows this foul production, be it Italian schmuck, sadism or snuff movies, to continue, and we must do something.
	We have at least two options. We have the Bill, which is not perfect in every aspect, but it is perfect in about 99 per cent. of it, and we have Dr. Tanya Byron's inquiry. I wish the Bill a fair following wind. I would like to see it succeed because I would like to see elected, democratic and accountable Select Committees of this House of Commons have a genuine and meaningful say in an issue that means an enormous amount to so many of our constituents. However, if owing to the travails of the parliamentary timetable and other calls on our time, it is not successful on the Floor of the House, it will be successful on the sounding board of the nation, because Dr. Tanya Byron's inquiry will be informed by the points that the hon. Gentleman and his supporters have made here today.
	I appeal to the House: let no one be in any doubt whatever on this issue. We can talk about structures and mechanisms; we can talk about the philosophical purity of allowing anyone to see anything, as against some sort of retrogressive censorship; we can talk about Mrs. Bowdler, or about attempting to hold back the tide and dam the flow. However, we have to do something. We have to recognise that there is a genuine concern out there that every one of us sees in our mailbags, in our e-mails and in our surgeries.
	For Parliament to say, "Something must be done", and then to do just anything is an abdication of our responsibility as parliamentarians. Simply to do something because something needs to be done is not what we were sent here for. We need to do something because it must be done, and to do anything other than that would be a double abdication of our responsibilities. We cannot simply say that the existing system is in place and we are happy with it, that it is not a censorship system but a classification system operated by the great and the good, and that there is no direct parliamentary accountability, as Parliament does not pay them any money and there can therefore be no link. There are many organisations that Parliament does not subsidise where Parliament has an overview.
	We have a locus in laws such as the Obscene Publications Acts. We pass legislation on the Floor of the House which has to be taken into account by the British Board of Film Classification. There is therefore a second-stage link at present. However, laws are passed over a fairly long period of time on a fairly wide scale. We cannot structure a law for a specific film, DVD or game. We can set the broad outlines and indicate what is acceptable and unacceptable, not in Parliament but in a civilised society. We need to do more than simply set the guidelines.

Roger Gale: You will be relieved to know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I did not come here today to talk about early-day motions. I came here to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) on securing this slot for what I believe is an important piece of legislation, and to add a few comments of my own. I want to comment on what other hon. Members have said before making one or two points based on my own personal modest media experience.
	The serial father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark), said that we would be better employed discussing matters relating to the internet. There is real concern in the House about the internet, and about the matter that appears on it. If my hon. Friend wishes to introduce a private Member's Bill to seek to regulate that, he can put me down as a sponsor, because I strongly believe that he is right. However, I do not think that that gainsays the importance of the measure that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury is seeking to introduce this morning; it might only be a small step, but it is an important one.
	Far too often, we talk in the House about doing things, and stress the need to deal with certain matters, but then do nothing. We have before us this morning the opportunity to take a very small step. We have all been here on Friday mornings when Members have introduced their private Members' Bills, and we are often told that the legislation is imperfect because it is badly drafted or does not go to the heart of this or that issue. In another life, I regularly chair Government Bill Committees, and I would not even begin to hazard a guess at the number of Government amendments that have been tabled in this Session of Parliament to the Government's own legislation. So, for any Member to stand up and say that this or that piece of a private Member's Bill is mildly imperfect is absolute nonsense.
	The purpose of this morning's debate is to take an issue and to ask whether it is important, and to determine whether the measure before us seeks to address it. If the answer is yes, the Bill will deserve a Second Reading. I shall try to demonstrate that I believe that the answer is yes, and that any Member, on either side of the House, who seeks to prevent the Bill from getting a Second Reading is doing a disservice to the House, to the legislative process and, dare I say it, to the public whom we represent.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) referred to age ratings, and to the fact that society had changed. He knows a great deal more about film than I do; it is arguable that he knows a great deal more about most things than I do. So far as changes in society are concerned, however, I can, simply by virtue of longevity, say that I have experienced slightly more than he has. As a fully paid-up aspirant geriatric, I am prepared to stand here and say that I do not believe that the fact that society has changed means that it has automatically changed for the better. Quite the reverse, in fact.
	The quality of programmes on television today is nothing like as good as it has been in the past. That is not to say that there are no good programmes being made today; there are. However, the quantity of nudity and bad language—and the paucity of invention and imagination—in many programmes leaves a huge amount to be desired, and I am certain that it has an effect on society. It is no surprise whatsoever to me that, by and large, the British nation is pretty depressed: one only has to sit and watch an evening's viewing full of soap operas, which I think I am right in saying are universally depressing. Let us consider the storylines. When did anybody in a soap opera enjoy anything? When was anybody in a soap opera happy? I am prepared to put a small amount of money on the fact that that has an effect on society.
	We will be told—I will be told—that television merely reflects society. I am sorry, but I believe that television takes a lead. I feel that very strongly, because for 20 years of the early part of my career, before I came into this House, I was a television producer and director. My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford mentioned my brief association with Miss Biddy Baxter. I am modestly proud of the fact that for six months of those 20 years, I was a director of "Blue Peter", but I am much more proud of the fact that I made for Thames Television a series of programmes called "White Light", which were made for teenagers. The first of that series was afforded a BAFTA nomination, and it came second. In all modesty, I have to say that there were only two entries.
	"White Light" was screened well before the threshold in the early hours of the evening. As a result of an item that I put out in the first series, I was hauled before what I think was then called the Independent Television Commission and asked to explain myself. The item in question was about drug taking. It was put on the screen quite deliberately at a very early hour in the evening. I cannot recall every detail, but I can recall that the final shot of the item was a very explicit one of a body in a mortuary drawer, and of the drawer then being slammed shut. Not entirely surprisingly, that one shot caused very considerable offence to some people; indeed, that did not surprise me at all. My justification was that I believed that if we were to send out a message to young people that drugs are bad—and they are—we had to do so to an audience who might just be influenced by it, and at a time when they might see it. So when I was hauled before the bishops of the ITC, that was the argument that I and my presenter, who was also dragged up before the beak, deployed. The ITC accepted my argument without question, having heard what we were about.
	The reason why the ITC accepted that argument is that it understood, as we understood, that what appears on the screen influences people. It really is as simple as that. I am not going to try to intellectualise this—I am not even capable of doing so. What I do know is that, for example, companies spend millions of pounds on advertising on the screen to influence people. They do not advertise cornflakes, soap powder and cars into the ether for no good purpose; they do it because they believe that they will sell those products. They do it because they know that those fleeting, flickering images influence people's behaviour. That is what this is about.
	The argument is frequently deployed—to some extent it has been this morning, although less so than I thought it might be—that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that any of the filth, violence and degrading sexuality that is allowed to appear on the cinema screen, on the small screen and in video games has any real effect on people. Of course there is not, because it is not possible to exercise a control. One cannot expose 50 14-year-olds to violence on the screen, and take an identical group of 50 14-year-olds that are not exposed to that and say, "Well, the first group thinks this and the other group thinks that, so QED." It does not work like that.
	However, what we do know is that there are sufficient examples of what is known as copycat crime to indicate that it is very possible indeed—not in any normal person, probably, but certainly in those who may already have some leaning toward violence, physical or sexual—that such images will trigger a response. Are we prepared to go on taking that chance? We can intellectualise this as much as we like. We can be very liberal. We can say that people have a right to see and hear whatever it is they wish to see and hear, or we can respond to what I believe is the public mood and say, "Here is a generation of children and young people who deserve our protection—the protection of this House—from matter that may affect them adversely and may affect their lives". I believe that we have a duty to take that step.
	I am not here to say that I believe that every dot and comma of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury is necessarily perfect, but I defy anybody in this Chamber this morning to look in the eye a constituent who is a parent and say that it does not deserve a Second Reading. It does, and I wish my hon. Friend well with it.

Andrew Dismore: I congratulate the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) on introducing his Bill. I think that this is the second time in recent years that he has been successful in the ballot. I have a little more sympathy with the aims of this Bill than I had with his last one. As I recall, I had to explain at great length why my objections to the previous Bill were justified, and I am afraid that it made little progress as a result.
	I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman has had to say today. There has been an interesting debate, in which people have elucidated well the serious harm that we in this House perceive is caused by some of the more obscene forms of video and film—obscene in the sense of violence in particular. I am not going to go through examples in detail. That has been done very adequately today, and if we do so there is a risk that we unwittingly give such examples publicity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) made clear. If we give them publicity, people might want to watch or buy them.
	What this debate is really about, or should be about—we have heard little on this from Opposition Members, except the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale)—is finding the right balance between giving people choice about what they watch, see and do without unnecessary restriction, and protecting the public from violence. In the context of this debate, we are often talking about the fear of copycat violence—people reproducing what they have seen on film. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who is no longer in the Chamber, gave the very graphic example of a case from his own constituency.
	However, whether we like it or not, what is being proposed does amount to censorship. The hon. Member for Canterbury said in his introduction that it is not about censorship, but I am afraid that it is. The question is whether it is good or bad censorship, whether we should be censoring such material, and if so, what the appropriate procedure is for doing so to prevent that material from getting into the public domain.

Stephen Pound: Sir Isaiah Berlin's aphorism that freedom for the shark does not equal freedom for the minnow has been quoted in the House before. Does my hon. Friend not agree that there are some forms of censorship, if that is the word we choose—protection is the word that I would prefer to use—are absolutely essential for the conduct of a civilised society?

Andrew Dismore: I most certainly do agree with my hon. Friend about that, as do the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights. I hope to talk about that later on. The point, first, is where the balance lies; and secondly, who exercises the decision making.
	My concern is about skating around the issue and calling it something that it is not. My hon. Friend mentioned protecting the public, but that is the object, not the exercise; the exercise is censorship with the aim of protecting the public in the end. That is a better way of looking at this debate. If we skate around and pretend that that is not what we are about, we run the risk of ducking the issue.

Andrew Dismore: My understanding is that the BBFC is about to embark, if it has not done so already, on the exercise of reviewing the guidelines; I stand to be corrected if I am wrong. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I should like to refer to some of that evidence later.
	Perhaps less consensus exists now than at any other time in relation to what adults may properly access. There are potential tensions between the proscription of obscene or violent material and the right to freedom of expression. I should like to read out a short quote from the Library briefing, which refers to the seminal textbook on this subject by Geoffrey Robertson QC and Andrew Nicol QC, experts in media law:
	"The deep division in society over the proper limits for sexual permissiveness is mirrored by an inconsistent and ineffective censorship of publications that may offend or entertain, corrupt or enlighten, according to the taste and character of individual readers. The problem with drawing a legal line between moral outrage and personal freedom has become intractable at a time when one person's obscenity is another person's bedtime reading"—
	or, in this context, viewing. That is the difficulty that we face, first, in general terms, in trying to find the balance that reflects those two conflicting interests, and secondly, in how we go about policing it.
	The key question is that of the guidelines themselves. In effect, the Bill proposes a form of parliamentary censorship over those guidelines through the Home Affairs Committee or the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. That gives rise to the issue of the extent to which Parliament is truly representative of British society. We are, of course, elected by our constituents to come here and represent them. However, when I look around this Chamber I see that we are all white, probably middle-class men, with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan)—one of the Whips—and two, probably middle-class women: my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman), the other Whip. I see very few young people— [ Interruption. ] Perhaps I should back off a little here. I do not know how old the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) is, but he is certainly not the sort of teenager we have been talking about. We are not representative of the class base of our country at large. We are not yet representative, by a long way, of the balance between the sexes, and certainly not as regards faith or race.

David Burrowes: I have not intervened to give the hon. Gentleman my date of birth.
	Perhaps one way to improve the worthy intentions of the Bill, to make it representative and to ensure that the trigger mechanism was party to a representative body of people would be to go beyond the concept of a parliamentary trigger and have a people trigger. That might include in Committee a trigger mechanism by way of a petition with the signatures of an appropriate number of people. Those people would be a representative body expressing views about something that is of general concern—the number of deplorable videos and DVDs that are coming into our homes.

Roger Gale: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman carefully. I happen to serve on the Select Committee on Procedure, which is currently considering whether the House should introduce an e-petitioning system, which I would describe as yet more parliamentary graffiti. The hon. Gentleman has just made an extremely good case against allowing e-petitioning. I endorse that sentiment wholeheartedly, but will he explain whether he believes the principle behind the Bill to be right or wrong? If he believes that the principle is right, surely the Bill deserves a Second Reading. He is going into the minutiae of the Bill, but is the principle right or wrong?

Andrew Dismore: From the Front Bench, my right hon. Friend says yes. So, we have a powerful policing mechanism over the BBFC.
	Again I return to the basic point of the debate. The hon. Member for Canterbury, who has left the Chamber, has come up with a jury concept for his Bill, but I simply ask him to reflect on this point. When the public were surveyed in 2005, they were asked about not only the standards and guidelines, but their experience of how those were operating, because that is what they go by. In relation to sex, in 2000, 54 per cent. thought that the standards and guidelines were about right, but that figure had gone up to 58 per cent. in 2004. Roughly a third thought that the guidelines were not strict enough. On violence, in 2004, 53 per cent. thought that they were about right and 41 per cent. thought that they were not strict enough. The figures on language and on drugs were similar.
	The point I want to make about those figures is that they show that society is divided on the issue. I am concerned that today's debate, during which we have got quite angry about these awful things, is not reflecting that. If we had a jury system and if a jury were to be properly reflective of society—this brings me to the point that I made in my first intervention on the hon. Member for Canterbury—we would inevitably end up with hung juries of one sort or another, because presumably, juries would fail to agree on the guidelines, as indicated by the proportions and the views expressed in that survey of 11,000 people.
	There is a real problem here. In relation to what are, effectively, differences of subjective view, Geoffrey Robertson and Andrew Nicol say in their book:
	"The central irony of the courtroom crusade—what might be termed 'the  Spycatcher effect'—is always present: seek to suppress a book by legal action [in  Spycatcher, the Government actually sued for breach of confidence] because it tends to corrupt, and the publicity attendant on its trial will spread that assumed corruption far more effectively than its quiet distribution.  Lady Chatterley's Lover sold three million copies in the three months following its prosecution in 1961. The last work of literature to be prosecuted for obscenity in a full-blooded Old Bailey trial was an undistinguished paperback entitled  Inside Linda Lovelace."
	That had the same effect. That is why, unlike other hon. Members, I have refrained from referring by title to any of the obscene materials that we have discussed today: I do not want to be accused of giving undue publicity in this debate to all those horrible things.
	We need to consider what the BBFC's process provides for. I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North whether he had read the guidelines; I wonder whether all the hon. Gentlemen who have spoken so far have read them as well. I have a copy here, and they are pretty tight. The guidelines provide detailed instructions on the submission for classification of films and videos, and the details take account of the differing natures of the media.
	The guidelines start from these basic questions:
	"—is the material in conflict with the law?
	—is the material, at the age group concerned, likely to be harmful?
	—is the material, at the age group concerned, clearly unacceptable to broad public opinion?"
	The BBFC tries to reflect public opinion in its procedure, and the legal considerations, particularly in relation to videos, require it to have special regard to the likelihood that the work will be viewed at home, and to any harm to those likely to view the video or to society from the behaviour of viewers afterwards. In considering those issues, the board has in mind the possible effect not only on children but on other vulnerable people. The Video Recordings Act 1984 also requires special regard to
	"(a) criminal behaviour;
	(b) illegal drugs;
	(c) violent behaviour or incidents;
	(d) horrific behaviour or incidents; or
	(e) human sexual activity",
	so the BBFC takes those things into account.
	As I have mentioned, the board also takes into account the Cinematographic Films (Animals) Act 1937, the Protection of Children Act 1978, the obscene publications Acts and the Licensing Act 2003, which has additional requirements dealing with public safety, prevention of public nuisance and the protection of children from harm. It starts from the basic premise from which any free society should start that
	"adults should as far as possible be free to choose what they see, providing that it remains within the law and is not potentially harmful to society".
	I hope that everybody in the House would agree that that should be the basic premise on which we proceed, as well as the premise that
	"works should be allowed to reach the widest audience that is appropriate for their theme and treatment".
	However, of course,
	"the context in which something (e.g. sex or violence) is presented is central to the question of its acceptability".
	Obviously, some things will be on the border between 18 and R18, but the BBFC says:
	"Classification decisions may be stricter on video, DVD and digital works than on film. This is because of the increased possibility of under-age viewing recognised in the Video Recordings Act, and of works being replayed or viewed out of context. Accordingly, a work may occasionally receive a higher age classification than on film, or require new or different cuts."

Andrew Dismore: The hon. Gentleman is wrong to refer to what happens in local authorities as an appeal. It is actually a decision, not an appeal. How it works is that the British Board of Film Classification gives a film a particular certificate, and generally a local authority accepts that classification. However, the local authority may have had protests or may decide not to accept the classification. I remember sitting on the licensing committee when I was a member of Westminster city council. I only had to watch one rather unpleasant film, and I think that we decided in the end not to permit it to be shown in Westminster, but that was a decision, not an appeal. The only appeal, I suppose, is a judicial review through the courts of an unreasonable decision by a local authority to ban, censor or reclassify a particular film. I think that that would be the only way to appeal. The hon. Gentleman is therefore wrong to refer to an appeal to a local authority. It may sound like an appeal to him, in that it involves the local authority going beyond its normal processes to intervene in the case of a particular film as a result of public pressure, but he is actually talking about the decision of a local authority, not an appeal to it.

Andrew Dismore: The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. There is a mixture of regulation, to which I referred earlier. It is not right for Parliament to censor; that would be fundamentally wrong, because the political balance in this place may change. There may be extreme parties in here one day. Who knows? There may be a completely different political balance. The people here might have a very different view of our society—one that was oppressive to a minority, or indeed a majority. Parliament should not engage in censorship. It would be wrong for it to do so in a democratic society. If we start censoring films and videos, where will it end? Will we then want to censor newspapers, because of what they write, or books? That is the road towards a very undemocratic society, and it would be wrong for Parliament to take it.
	That is not to say that Parliament should not approve an appropriate mechanism that allows an independent body to perform that function. The body should be subject to a very light touch, in case it goes off the rails. At the moment, that light touch is provided through the Video Recordings Act 1984, which provides for the Secretary of State to appoint the regulator, and which sets out clear criteria for it.

Don Foster: Just to ensure that I am absolutely correct, does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as I mentioned in an earlier intervention, there is already an additional stage, as section 5(1) and (2) of the 1984 Act means that the Secretary of State can only decide to appoint the designated person if there is no objection from either House? Both Houses therefore have a veto, so there is full parliamentary involvement in that important decision.

Andrew Dismore: As I said, I would disagree with a view that would approve anything like that. The question is whether it is for us in Parliament or for someone else to make that decision and be held to account for it—in this case, by the Secretary of State. Perhaps the Minister will let us know what representations the Government have made to the BBFC about that particular game. If they have not made any such representations, why they not done so? It would be interesting to hear the response.
	That comes back to the fact that ultimately somebody must make a decision and say where the line is drawn. I agree with the hon. Member for Canterbury that that video game was beyond the pale. I would not dispute that, but we must decide who is the appropriate person to make such decisions. Is it us lay people, doing the best we can, or is it people who have more experience of this issue because they view these things day in, day out in order to have an idea of where to draw the line to reflect public opinion? The latter group use their own opinion polling and surveying and their experience of what is being produced by the industry.
	We must reflect on the fact that the BBFC is an independent, non-governmental body that, in one form or another, has been doing this job since 1912. The object is to bring a degree of uniformity to the classification of films nationally. As I have said, the statutory powers ultimately rest with the local councils, which can overrule the decisions, but a degree of consistency and uniformity in the process is important.
	The hon. Gentleman said that the appointments process could be done through Parliament. I fully accept that the BBFC is an industry body, but it is responsible for ensuring fair and effective regulation of the industry. That is appropriate because the industry needs to know where it stands. The BBFC is a private company limited by guarantee, but it also has statutory duties, via the 1984 Act, that go beyond those simple industry body responsibilities. Everybody should accept that it is important to preserve the BBFC's independence.
	The Government are consulted from time to time about the BBFC's statutory role in relation to videos. That fact emerged from a parliamentary answer that was referred to in the House of Commons Library briefing.
	So we have a reasonable balance. My main concern about the Bill's proposals is the scrutiny of appointments by a Select Committee, whether it is the Home Affairs Committee, as the Bill states, or the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, who is no longer in his place.
	As I said in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East, the Government have asked Select Committees, via the Liaison Committee, to consider the scrutiny of outside appointments. The Government produced a consultation paper, with a list of jobs on which they think Parliament should be consulted. Parliament would not have the right of approval, but it would have the right to be consulted. Ultimately, the decision would be made by the Government—probably by the Secretary of State concerned.
	That consultation exercise has been going on for several weeks. Each Chairman of a Select Committee was asked to show his Committee the list of jobs and whether we wanted to add NGO or other appointments that we thought appropriate. For example, my Committee suggested that we should add the chair of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission, which was not on the Government's list. I say that by way of diversion to show the matters that we discussed.
	The objective of the consultation was to examine senior appointments, not those all the way down the food chain, which could mean Select Committees becoming bogged down. Indeed, discussions seem to suggest that some Select Committees may have bitten off more than they can chew in the number of appointments that they want to scrutinise. Appointments will be made by the Government, not necessarily on the recommendation of the relevant Select Committee, but taking its views into account.
	Not one Select Committee proposed that any of the people referred to in the Bill should be part of that scrutiny process. Bearing in mind that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East, who has left his place, is a sponsor of the Bill, I would have thought that if he felt so strongly about it he would have asked his Committee to consider suggesting those posts for inclusion, and proposed them to the Liaison Committee for approval at our meeting yesterday. I am surprised that he did not. Perhaps he suggested it in private discussions and the Committee was not enamoured of the idea.
	Similarly, the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, who chairs the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, could have suggested those appointments for inclusion. His Committee suggested the appointments that it thought it ought to approve, and the heads of the BBFC were not on the list. From his remarks earlier, it seems that he does not think that they should be. That calls into question the extent to which the Bill's sponsors have consulted those who would be given the additional responsibilities proposed. The inference must be that those people were not asked about it at all, particularly bearing in mind the exercise that has been undertaken by the Liaison Committee at the Government's request.
	We need to spend a little time on the appeal mechanism. The current appeals process is geared towards appeals by those who present films for classification. They may object to the classification that they are given, perhaps because cuts have been made or because they believe it has been put in the wrong age bracket. Ultimately, the video appeals committee's decisions are subject to judicial review if the film maker requests it.
	The problem is that there is no mechanism to allow members of the public to ask for a decision to be reconsidered by the VAC. We need to consider whether we ought to allow a review if a significant number of members of the public ask for it. If there is an outcry about a TV broadcast and a lot of people write in, the regulator examines the decisions made by the broadcaster, which is appropriate. If the regulator thinks that the broadcaster's decision was wrong, the broadcaster is rapped over the knuckles or can be fined. Perhaps we need to try to find a similar mechanism to allow a regulator to review those decisions. Obviously, that regulator could not be the BBFC, because it makes the decision. Perhaps we could arrange somehow for the video appeals committee to receive the complaints directly and to have a trigger mechanism whereby a decision made by the BBFC should be reconsidered when a certain number of representations were made.
	I fully accept that all the problems of retrospectivity would apply. Once such things are out in the public domain, it becomes difficult to recall them. One could stop further examples from being sold; I suppose that one could not stop them from being pirated. It is not the same as in the cinema, where a film can no longer be shown, or in TV, where broadcasters can be told not to put the broadcast out again. We ought to see whether it is possible to work out some appeal mechanism that would allow the public to express their views.
	As I said earlier, I am extremely concerned about the proposed system of using an early-day motion to trigger an appeal, not because I think that it would ultimately bring Parliament into even more disrepute with the public, but because it would be a recipe for all sorts of mischief that would not advance the cause that the Bill tries to address. We would be bogged down with all sorts of complaints about trivial matters and the more serious problems would get lost in the herd. We would not have the opportunity to consider what should be done about these evil, violent videos, because we would be getting the requests all the time and signing them away without even thinking about what we were doing, to avoid pressure from the public.
	I am concerned, too, about the mechanism of the people's jury. First, the jury will be drawn from a panel of volunteers. If we are working on the basis of volunteering, how will that jury reflect society as a whole? One can imagine that the people who will volunteer will be those with an axe to grind, not just against the sort of evils that we seek to prevent with the Bill but more generally against such things as the video version of "Jerry Springer—The Opera" or even "Life of Brian", which is banned in Glasgow, as we heard earlier. There is a real risk that the jury will be drawn from a self-selected volunteer panel.
	Secondly, if the jury genuinely reflects our society and we get over the problem of the self-selection of volunteers, we will end up with the problem of a hung jury. That would be a likely consequence, bearing in mind the research work that the BBFC has done that shows how divided our society is on the issues of violence in film and video. If we end up with a jury, we will presumably have to have provision for unanimity, or if not for unanimity for a majority verdict. What will happen if a jury decides 6:6 or 7:5? That is hardly a ringing endorsement of the decision one way or the other. Would it ultimately be binding? We then get into the argument about chair's casting votes and so forth. That is not a sensible way to go.
	I would certainly be happy to have a method whereby certain numbers of members of the public could trigger a complaint and a review of a decision, but that review should be carried out by the video appeals committee. This is a complicated issue under the procedures set out in the Bill that could be made a lot simpler and easier to administer.
	The Bill also talks about the internet. The whole question of the regulation of the internet is very complicated. I have grappled with it in relation to problems arising out use of the internet by Muslim fundamentalism trying to create the climate of violence from Islamic terrorism from which we know we suffer in our country. I have grappled with the question on behalf of constituents in relation to anti-Semitism and, of course, racism. The problem is always that the roots of those websites go far away into different countries. Trying to regulate the internet has been complicated, and Governments will continue to grapple with how to deal with it. That is why I think that it is very important that the Prime Minister has asked Dr. Tanya Byron to lead a review to consider, among other things, how best to deal with that problem. I look forward to her review and its recommendations in March.
	The real problem is that the available academic research does not actually establish the link that we all think exists between watching such videos and violence. We have already heard about the case of Stefan Pakeerah. Everybody thinks there was a link in that case and there may indeed have been one, but so far academic research does not support it, which is why Dr. Byron's review is important. Let us hope that she will produce an answer that allows us to decide about the link one way or the other. However, it is important to recognise that in the Pakeerah case neither the police nor the prosecution supported the claim that there was a link between the video and the appalling murder, although I am pleased that afterwards retailers rightly withdrew the game from sale.
	The Bill raises important issues, which is why it was crucial that the review was commissioned, because it will look at the evidence of harm and at the measures needed to protect children from inappropriate content. The Bill is based on the premise that exposure to violent behaviour in films or computer games leads to violent behaviour in real life, but the evidence so far does not really suggest much correlation, except in relation to violent pornography and sexual offences, which are of course already illegal, as I mentioned earlier.
	The objectives of the Byron review are set out in the Library briefing paper:
	"To undertake a review of the evidence on risks to children's safety and wellbeing of exposure to harmful or inappropriate material on the internet and in video games...To assess the effectiveness and adequacy of existing measures to help prevent children from being exposed to such material and help parents understand and manage the risks of access to inappropriate content, and to make recommendations for improvements or additional action."
	That seems a much more sensible way forward.
	Today, based on our view of what is going on in society, we have identified an ill that needs to be addressed. The Government need to respond to the very real fear and concern expressed in the House today, but it is not appropriate for Parliament to be involved in censorship. There is a risk that we would end up interfering with entirely private rights. There is also a risk of rule by the mob or the Mary Whitehouse tendency and a real risk of unbalance in our approach. We need to consider how we can enhance the role of the regulator so that it takes a little more account of public opinion and where we want society to be rather than the direction in which it may be heading, as heralded by some videos.
	We need to look at human rights provisions. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) referred to article 10 of the European convention on human rights, which makes it clear that everyone has the right to freedom of expression. The right applies to all of us, but it does not prevent states from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprise, which is the regime we follow. The right to freedom of expression is not unfettered. Exercise of that freedom carries with it duties and responsibilities, which allow the law to make provision for the prevention of disorder and violent crime or the protection of health and morals and so on.
	It is important that we bear in mind the fact that an overwhelming number of people believe in freedom of expression—the right to say and do what we want—but within the constraints of the responsibilities and duties we owe each other. We need to ensure that we exercise our right to freedom of expression in a way that does not affect the health and morals of our society or create the risk of disorder or crime. Those provisions are in the European convention on human rights and that is the direction we need to take. However, we must provide certainty. The biggest enemy in the law is uncertainty, so we need a process of classification and criteria for it that are absolutely clear. That is a fair reflection of the law and is encapsulated in the Library briefing.
	To conclude my remarks, I very much agree with the broad thrust of the speech made by the hon. Member for Canterbury when he introduced the Bill, and I agree with most of the other contributors about the need for us to take firm action to deal with appalling, dangerous and violent videos of extreme form. However, in doing so we should reflect on the fact that Parliament should not be involved in censorship. We should put in place appropriate mechanisms to allow independent people to make decisions on behalf of our society, in a way that reflects its morals and views, to stop those appalling productions falling into the hands of the general public.

Don Foster: I am delighted to hear that progress might be made on this issue in Committee, if the Bill reaches that stage.
	I have tried to be supportive of the hon. Gentleman and his Bill on that issue, but I have to tell him that from now on, it is downhill, because there is no other part of the Bill with which I have any agreement whatsoever. However, I hope that that will in no way lead him to suggest that I am belittling the concerns that he and many other people have about the issues that we are debating. All Members who have spoken so far, and doubtless those who have still to contribute, will share those concerns. To say that the status quo is adequate is simply not good enough. Changes are needed; for example, the hon. Member for Hendon suggested giving greater opportunities for other groups to have an appeal heard by the VAC. There is a general acceptance that there are issues and concerns, and I hope that some of them will be addressed by the Byron review, to which I will return.
	I have practical concerns about the detail of the Bill, the first of which relates to the appeals mechanisms, which have been touched on by many others. As we heard, there are in effect two appeals processes. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Hendon that the use of the local authority in respect of films shown in cinemas is not really an appeal, but that is the mechanism for such films. As we have heard, for videos, DVDs and certain video games, the mechanism is the work of the video appeals committee.
	A number of people have talked about the VAC being a creature of the BBFC, and it certainly is, but nobody should be in any doubt as to its robust independence. We have already heard probably the best example of that from the mouth of the Bill's promoter—the row that occurred about "Manhunt 2". Let us reflect on this point. This can hardly be a cosy relationship, given that the BBFC effectively took to judicial review a decision made by the VAC. The VAC has, therefore, clearly shown real independence. The hon. Member for Hendon referred several times to the excellent book by Robertson and Nichol on media law. Having studied this matter, they make it very clear that the VAC really does exert its independence. So it is an independent body, and we should not forget that.
	The Bill proposes to establish a new appeals body for videos, DVDs and some video games. As we have heard, it would consist of an independent panel, 12 of whose members would be selected at random for each hearing, which would be triggered by an early-day motion with 50 or more signatures. The issues to be dealt with include the classification of an existing video game. I have nothing at all against the idea of ensuring that the VAC is independent not only in spirit, as it currently clearly is, but in structural terms.
	I accept that we should look at that issue, because there is within the minds of some a lingering doubt that it is a creature of the BBFC. However, the question then is why we need to set up this elaborate procedure. Is there any real evidence of huge dissatisfaction with the work being done or with the classification system itself, against which the vast majority of appeals are actually aimed? As we heard from the hon. Member for Hendon and others, there are clearly mixed views on the matter. There always will be. However, we know from the detailed research—incidentally, it was not conducted, as was suggested, by one independent organisation, but by several—that the majority of the public were satisfied with the guidelines on all the categories, whether on sex, violence, language or drugs. The hon. Gentleman cited the figures on that.
	The phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," certainly springs to mind. I have suggested some areas in tinkering is needed, but I am not convinced that we need a radical overhaul as the hon. Member for Canterbury suggests. I say that particularly in the light of the Byron review, to which much reference has been made today. Frankly, it is bizarre that we should set up a review to consider a large number—although not all, I accept—of the issues on which the Bill touches and discuss those issues without having had its results. Surely it would be far better for us to consider the review's outcome to help us in our deliberations on how we can take forward and address the concerns already expressed in this Chamber.
	The notion that an appeal should be triggered by 50 signatures on an early-day motion is the most bizarre of all the things in the Bill. I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Canterbury is looking for a mechanism to reflect what he called public opinion on these issues, and I understand that. However, I am not at all convinced that that is the right way of doing it. I am sure that, like the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey), the hon. Gentleman is an avid reader of early-day motions and that both hon. Gentlemen know that as of last night, when I struggled away from my office at 10 pm and finally checked, there were 1,075 early-day motions before the House. Of those, 380 have 50 or more signatures; I urge all hon. Members to have a look at those. However, they should also note that the vast majority of early-day motions have fewer than 50 right hon. and hon. Members' names on them.
	Having looked at the early-day motions with fewer than 50 signatures, I have no doubt that hon. Members might pick up on early-day motion 590, which was tabled by the right hon. Member for Leicester, East. It expresses his concern about that much-talked-about video game "Manhunt 2". It was tabled on 17 December, but to this day has only 24 signatures—interestingly, they do not include that of the sponsor of this Bill, despite his expressions of concern about the game.

Don Foster: Very good. In a second, I shall help the hon. Gentleman with some other putting right that he might want to do.
	It is worth reflecting on why so few Members of Parliament have signed the early-day motion on "Manhunt 2". The BBFC received 779 complaints about its banning of that game, but the vast majority were from people protesting about the ban, not people suggesting that it should have been done sooner or that something else should have been done.
	I want to draw attention to early-day motion 849, a second one with fewer than 50 signatures. I referred to it in an intervention earlier. That early-day motion, which was also tabled by the right hon. Member for Leicester, East, is about the video that I have not seen but that was clearly the bedtime viewing of the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford—"SS Experiment Camp". It was tabled more than three weeks ago, but as of last night it had only 10 signatures. Again, despite the hon. Member for Canterbury expressing his deep concern about that item to the Prime Minister on 20 February, his signature is not on the motion; no doubt he will assure us that he is going to put that right at the end of this debate.
	It is worth reflecting on the fact that early-day motion 983, which deals with the cost of drinks and confectionery in cinemas and was tabled much more recently, already has 32 signatures. That is indicative of the interest that Members of all parties have as regards issues of real concern.
	It may be that both early-day motions will, in due course, reach the magic number of 50. However, the question is what would happen in the period between when the motion was first tabled and when the magic number of 50 eventually arrived, triggering the appeal and suspending sales. Bearing in mind the fact that hon. Member for Canterbury has not yet got round to signing early-day motions from before Christmas, that could take weeks, during which huge amounts of publicity would be given to the item concerned. We heard earlier about the example of "Inside Linda Lovelace", and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" sold millions of copies as a result of the publicity relating to the trial. I am certain that this procedure would achieve the exact opposite of what anybody might want to achieve. It would create massive publicity, with names of right hon. and hon. Members who had not signed the early-day motion appearing in newspapers up and down the land and pressure being applied, and sales would rocket.
	In practical terms, how would MPs come to know about the concerns of their constituents and other people? As I say, there would be pressure from newspapers, but there would also be pressure from groups that have not even seen the item they are worried about. It is worth noting that huge concern was expressed about two programmes that were recently on television— "Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel" and "Undercover Mosque"—before their even having been screened. Yet once they had appeared on our screens, many people who had protested and said how disgraceful it was that Channel 4 was going to show them were much quieter. We should be confident that we have a proper and careful procedure for Ofcom, the independent regulator, to follow.
	Another good example of members of the public taking up extreme positions about things that they have not seen is the film "Dogma", starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, among others. That film was protested about by a large number of people from a group within the Catholic church, more than 2,500 of whom complained to the BBFC, saying that it was blasphemous and anti-Roman Catholic and demanding that it be banned. None of those complaining had actually seen the film, which was passed with a 15 certificate. When the BBFC contacted the Archbishop of Westminster's office about it, the people there did not think it was blasphemous, were not remotely worried that it was in any way anti-Roman Catholic, and encouraged the people who had complained to go to see it. I am worried that there would be similar whipped-up campaigns based on the prejudice of people who had not seen the film concerned. I would be deeply concerned about the system of early-day motions, which has already been brought into question by the hon. Member for North Thanet, being used in such a process.
	It is important that such issues are dealt with by an independent body. It is right and proper that Parliament has a say in setting the framework for that body's work. It is right and proper that a Select Committee can scrutinise any appointments, and even that it has a veto. It is right that Parliament, through the Secretary of State, makes the appointment. Going beyond that to use the approaches suggested by the hon. Member for Canterbury would be a step too far. However, he wants to go still further.
	The hon. Gentleman wants Parliament to be involved in scrutinising, and effectively vetoing, the guidelines that apply to videos, DVDs and some video games. He is proposing that that could be done in the way he describes in the Bill. However, we come back to the notion "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I am not aware of wide- scale dissatisfaction with the current arrangements. I have acknowledged that the opinion polling has produced mixed results, but in all polls the majority favour the current arrangements. As we have heard already, those arrangements were put into place in 2005, based on a 2004 consultation.
	The BBFC is already planning and undertaking the consultation that will inform the 2009 guidelines. I have no doubt that in the period between the 2004 work and now, there will have been some changes in public opinion, and I have no doubt whatsoever that those will be reflected in the results. It will be for the BBFC to ensure that it reflects changes in public opinion—there may be increased concerns of the sort set out by the hon. Gentleman and others. The BBFC will be able to reflect those concerns in the revised guidelines.

Don Foster: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but the one thing on which I hope we can agree is that work is now under way on a major survey to ascertain the public's view and whether there has been a change in public opinion. I do not know what the results will be and nor, I suggest, does the hon. Gentleman. However, we both have the opportunity—it is not too late—to influence how the BBFC obtains the information. If he feels strongly that it conducted the last survey incorrectly, I would urge him to contact the BBFC and share his concerns about the methodology used, to ensure that that does not happen again. That way, we will all be in possession of information that none of us currently knows.
	As I said earlier, although the BBFC is portrayed as being far too timid, it is worth reflecting on the fact that 10 per cent. of its decisions have been to give certificates of a higher categorisation than were requested by the film makers. There are many such examples, including "I Am Legend", "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and "Cloverfield", which were given a 15 rating instead of a 12A rating, "The Proposition" and "This Is England", both of which were given an 18 rating instead of a 15 rating, and "Sweeney Todd", whose classification the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was, as we heard, desperate to have reduced on behalf of his children. There are also a number of cases where films and videos were rejected altogether. The BBFC is therefore not a soft-touch organisation; it is one that that commands the support—albeit by only a small margin—of a majority of the British people and one whose decisions are tougher than it is often given credit for.
	I therefore have concerns about Parliament getting involved in the nitty-gritty of the guidelines. For reasons that I have already given, I think that that would be a step too far. Parliament would have the opportunity of throwing out the head of the organisation responsible for the BBFC if Parliament—or, specifically, the relevant Select Committee—believed that it had come up with an inappropriate set of guidelines.
	Finally, let me deal with one issue in the Bill that has not been touched on at all, other than briefly in an intervention. The current maximum fine that can be levied on retailers selling DVDs, videos or video games is £5,000. The Bill proposes to increase that to £20,000. However, the average fines in recent years have been considerably below the £5,000 maximum. Indeed, the average fines in the past 10 years have been: £519, £440, £798, £1,028, £1,378, £1,079, £921, £775, £489 and £1,244 in 2006, the last year for which we have figures. If we are thinking of increasing the fine, there must be a significant change of attitude among those deciding on the level of the fine. I would not object to that. Where there have been breaches, those concerned need to be penalised severely to ensure that people know how seriously we take the issue.
	The real issue is not the size of the fine, however; it is that not many people are being fined at all. The concern among my constituents and every other hon. Member's constituents is about the ease with which children can get hold of such material—videos, DVDs and certain computer games—in many shops. We have heard examples of the ease of accessing such material. I said in an intervention that I knew how many prosecutions there had been in recent years. I said that the average over the past 10 years was 14. However, it is instructive to note that the last time we reached even 14 prosecutions was in 2003. There were only six prosecutions in 2004, and only eight in 2005 and 2006.
	We can talk as much as we like about increasing the penalties, the level of fine and the length of imprisonment, as the Bill does, but frankly there is no point in worrying about those issues unless we first ensure real enforcement of existing legislation. If that means making the labelling clearer and dealing with the two different types of labelling for some video games, then so be it; it is a task that we should undertake. I know that the Select Committee, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, is looking into that particular issue. We hope for an urgent response.
	Labelling is important, but so is the education of members of staff working in the stores, as is educating parents about what the labels mean. With proper enforcement, we can hope that the figures will stay low because everyone will be abiding by the law rather than getting away with it, as I am convinced is currently the case.
	Let me end with brief comments on another issue. As others have said, although the Bill is important and addresses issues that are of concern to many people, in some senses it misses the key point. The biggest concern should really be about the internet, particularly the ability of children to access all sorts of inappropriate material on it. That is why, as I said briefly before, I greatly welcome the Government's appointment of Dr. Byron to look into that particular issue. I have kept track of her work—for example, her extensive survey work and her engagement with many experts in the field. I believe that the result of her work will influence further movements in Parliament to deal with these issues.
	For the many reasons I have provided, I do not believe that the time is right to press ahead with the Bill as drafted. It would not be right to go ahead right now when we are about to receive the results of some very important research. I congratulate the hon. Member for Canterbury on initiating our debate on these important issues. As I have explained, apart from one small area of agreement, I sadly disagree with the majority of the Bill, so I cannot support it.

Stephen Pound: Is not my right hon. Friend's point about that dark abyss beyond R18 one of the principal motivators of the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier)? None of us is prudish. I do not think that any of us are objecting to consenting adults appearing in films, and if consenting adults want to buy them, so be it. We are really concerned by the denigration of the performers and the observers and the constant moving of the boundaries further and further away beyond the R18 rating and beyond even unimaginable horrors. Is that not what we should—to use a dreadful, trite, hackneyed parliamentary phrase—be putting down a marker for?

Stephen Pound: As one who has lead a fairly sheltered life, despite appearances to the contrary, I too have had a look at some material in connection with this matter. Surely the point about "SS Extermination Camp" is not that it is a bad film but that it is a film about the gratuitous torture of human beings, and whereas today there is a bad film about torture on the market, tomorrow there could be a better film about torture. That is what concerns me. The minute that we have the public availability of a film that relies on that form of viciousness, the question of whether it is bad, good, aesthetic, well lit or well acted, is irrelevant. It is out there and another one could then follow it.

Drugs (Reclassification) Bill

Meg Hillier: I can refer the hon. Lady after this debate to a number of parliamentary answers from recent weeks and months that list research on the DNA database that is currently under way. I should be happy to direct her to those answers and if necessary, to write to her further, in order to give the exact detail of what the research is being used for, which will confirm the points that I have made.
	It would be useful to clarify what information is held on the database and to talk about how it works and what the DNA sample translates to on the database, before I discuss the serious issue of the over-representation of young black men. First, the information is limited. It is used simply to match DNA from a crime scene with the DNA from a person. Also, the information does not include a record of a person's entire genetic make-up, which will perhaps reassure the hon. Lady on the point about research. The information held is known as the profile and comprises only the 20 two-digit numbers and the indicator of gender. The information on the database does not include anything about criminal records, which are held on the police national computer, and the two are not, on a general basis, run together, although I can go into that further if I have time.
	The DNA database is an intelligence database, not a criminal records database. It is important to remember that it does not imply that a person is an offender. In many senses, the DNA database is blind. Until someone commits an offence or is arrested for something, the fact that they are on the database does not trigger anything, unless their information is found at a crime scene.
	We are sometimes told that people with no convictions but a record on the DNA database are worried that that will affect their ability to get jobs or visas, or that the database will flag them up as a concern. I recognise those concerns, but that is not the case. If people have been in contact with the police over a serious issue, that might well be on the police national computer, but that is separate. It is not the case, however, that anything on the DNA database has a flag, in terms of criminality.
	To take a recent cause célèbre, although the issue at Soham was not related to DNA, information on Ian Huntley's previous behaviour was not collected on the police national computer. Had that information been collected better, the outcome of the case could have been different. The DNA database, however, is not connected with the police national computer.
	It is worth highlighting the fact that, from the point of view of criminal record checks, someone who is arrested or charged but not convicted is in exactly the same position as someone who has never been arrested—that is, a criminal records check will show no conviction.
	It is also worth reassuring the hon. Lady and others about who can access the database. There is no free access to the database. Only about 30 named people in the DNA custodian's office or currently working for the Forensic Science Service under a contract to supply IT for the database have access to it. The police do not have direct access to the database. If a match is found, further investigation will take place. How people are categorised by ethnic group on the database and the statistics of what percentages of different ethnic groups are on it are not readily available to people, either.
	Let me deal with the hon. Lady's main concerns, about black and minority ethnic representation, and explain how people are categorised on the database, before addressing some of her other points. The database indeed holds records on the "ethnic appearance" of persons who are arrested and have a DNA sample taken, as we all understand, which is based on the judgment of the arresting police officer, using seven broad categories based on the categories used on the police national computer. The categories will inevitably be visual, because the categorisation is not the same as with the census, where people self-identify. The categories are: African-Caribbean, Arab, Asian, dark-skinned European, oriental, white-skinned European and other/unknown. The hon. Lady will be pleased to know that I have been asking questions about those categorisations. It is a difficult balance; she or I would be described differently by different people. I shall touch on that matter again shortly, but it is worth noting that this is different from the 16 plus one ethnicity list used in the census.
	As for the most recent data, on 30 September the national DNA database had the following: 78 per cent. DNA of white-skinned Europeans; 8 per cent. Afro-Caribbean; 5 per cent. Asian; 3 per cent. other ethnic appearance groups; and 6 per cent. of unknown ethnic appearance. I will gladly give the hon. Lady those figures afterwards if it would help. If we compare that distribution with the statistics on arrests, it will bring us to the crux of the issues that the hon. Lady raised. The Government are concerned about them, and I and other hon. Members are concerned about them as constituency MPs.
	In 2005-06, of an estimated 1.4 million arrests, 84 per cent. were recorded as being of white people; 9 per cent. black people; 5 per cent. Asian; and 1.3 per cent. of other ethnic groups. The national DNA database figures broadly reflect the processes by which people are brought into the criminal justice system. They are legitimately sampled under current law—the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, as amended in 2001 and 2003. The samples are on the database because the people were under suspicion for committing a recordable offence, not because of any inherent bias in the database itself. There is, however, one issue raised in the Select Committee report that we are looking further into, and I shall touch on it later.
	As the hon. Lady says and we all know, a large body of evidence indicates that black and minority ethnic communities continue to be over-represented in the criminal justice system. That should be a real concern to us all, as it is to the Government. Stop and search and arrest are just some of the better-known issues. I speak to mothers in my constituency who are concerned about their sons and others who have been arrested—and they do not raise just the DNA database; sometimes that is part of it, but it is more often about wider issues. I stress again that the database is not a criminal database. Having a profile on it does not disadvantage anyone in any way—unless they commit a recordable offence.